


A Study in Yellow and Red

by Merfilly



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1331995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy goes, when Dinah is hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Yellow and Red

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a reimagining of Dinah and Roy starting at Longbow Hunters and undoing the Identity Crisis. I seem to have lost the muses.

Roy was fairly sure he would never have heard about what happened in Seattle, if Hal hadn't decided to go see Oliver that week. Hal being the busybody he was told Wally in a phone call that things looked bad for the couple, and did he have a current number for Roy. Wally got the details, progressively turning whiter as he did before making the run to Donna and then Dick before he knew where to find Roy.

Roy was surprised and suspicious of Wally showing up on his doorstep, but when he actually woke up enough to see his friend's face, he got cold and numb inside.

"It's Canary. She's in the hospital. The doctors...they're not sure..."

"Take me!" was Roy's immediate demand, deciding then and there that the latest offer of work could rot in hell. Dinah needed him.

* * *

He hated hospitals. This time, he barely noticed the externals of the building, the staffing, the machines. All he could see was Ollie in the waiting room, the sign that said Intensive Care, and the fact Hal wasn't in sight.

"Ollie?" Roy really would have rather had Hal there, as a buffer, but he could keep his temper in check. He had to. He couldn't let Dinah down.

"Kiddo." Ollie looked up and started to stand, but he was stiff and weak from the vigil.

"Have you even eaten?" Roy asked, seeing how pale he was under his California tan. He quickly took the chair beside Ollie to keep him seated.

"Hal just went for grub." Ollie looked down the hall to that forbidding door. "Not that I..."

"You have to eat, you jerk. She'd be pissed if you don't." Roy could and would play that card; Ollie did seem to live for Dinah's good opinion of him sometimes.

Ollie nodded, almost woodenly, and then put his face in his hands. Roy wasn't real sure what to say or do. He wanted to know what had happened, how she was, but Ollie was in no shape. He'd just have to wait for Hal to come back, and see what Hal knew.

* * *

The talk with Hal had been sobering. A list of injuries, internal and external, had followed a break down...as best Hal could...of Di's case that had gotten her in this shape. Roy bit down the flush of guilt; Dinah would follow drug cases even if he hadn't made it personal for her.

Now, sitting in the ICU, Dinah on multiple machines, Roy was soberly trying not to be morbid. His luck, he couldn't help but think, would turn against her. He'd lose her, the one person who never turned him away, because no one ever stayed. He kept fighting that thought with all he had, but Hal said her heart had already stopped three times since she was brought to the hospital.

"You can't leave me. You promised," he whispered softly, over and over again through the fifteen minutes he had been given with her. The litany was in Dineh, and his hand never left hers, as he prayed his worst fears did not come to pass.

* * *

"...as if she doesn't want to survive it," the doctor was saying in low tones to Ollie as Roy woke from where he had dozed off. He decided playing possum might win him more information than not; in the three days since he had come to the hospital, he'd already seen a tendency on the staff's part to treat him like a Dinah's kid, or a kid brother...too young to deal with the serious side of her being there.

Ollie audibly swallowed. "Just keep doing what you can," he whispered.

"We will, Mister Queen. Miss Lance's brain activity is marginally increasing, so that holds out some hope." The doctor moved on and Ollie returned to slump heavily in his chair. Roy kept his eyes closed, his breathing light, as Hal moved closer to Ollie.

"She wouldn't..."

"It's Dinah. It always set hard with her. Losing Bar..."

Hal's breathing grew harsh, and Roy could hear Ollie all but sob.

"She can't keep letting that guilt force her choices," Hal muttered.

Roy wondered what guilt, and let himself appear to be waking once it was clear neither man was going to say any more.

* * *

Each of them took their own turns with Dinah during the long vigil while she remained in ICU. It struck Roy as odd that not a single other hero came, given how crucial to the League Dinah and Ollie both had been in the past. Then again, in asking about him, Wally probably hadn't taken the time to mention to Donna or Dick that it was for Dinah.

Luck did turn for the redhead, as he settled into the chair beside the bed and he realized Dinah was staring at the ceiling. 

"Di?"

She turned her head slowly to look at him, tears welling up as she looked at him. 

"Don't cry, Di. Unless it hurts, but then we can get you something for the pain." He pressed his hand into hers, felt her squeeze it back.

"Roy." It was a harshly soft whisper, tainted by … by what? Fear froze his chest as he realized the tears weren't for pain. Not physical pain, anyway. The doctor had been right, his Di had wanted to give up. Only...

"You can't quit, Di. You promised me...you can't quit on me, you hear?" he pleaded in a soft voice, feeling like he was sixteen all over again, asking her to shoot him or shoot him up.

"Won't," she said, eyes closing. "Can't. Don't break promises."

"No, you don't," he said with a soft sigh of relief...and still too much fear in his soul.

* * *

That was the turning point of the hospital stay, just knowing her Boy-o was there. Something was riding her hard, because he saw it in her silences and her tears, heard it in the half-whispered conversations between Hal and Ollie, inferred it from their chosen exile away from their peers. However, Dinah Lance was a woman who kept her promises, and Roy was selfish enough to hold his presence over her head to get her well again. Whatever it was that haunted her could be dealt with, once she was better. 

Only, even getting strong enough to go home, proved to have its own promise of pain. Roy noticed it in the way Dinah had such a hard time being near any of the three of them. He watched it building to new heights with Ollie moving out of the bedroom they were supposed to share to a couch in his own space, leaving Roy to the main couch. That was only part of it. Dinah's flinching away from them was nothing compared to the fact she did nothing to indicate she wanted to train back up. She did not watch the streets from the window. She didn't protest when Ollie went out in gear...but she didn't ever suggest she'd be out there again soon. Worst, to Roy's way of thinking, Ollie wasn't doing a damn thing to encourage her to do so. He was treating her with kid gloves, not pushing her one way or another. 

Roy felt a bitterness in the pit of his stomach, watching Dinah fold inward, watching Ollie mill about helplessly, and not being sure how to break the détente as Dinah grew stronger. Hal had left two nights after Dinah came back from the hospital, and Roy thought privately that might have been for the best. After all, Dinah had said a few things that left Roy wondering if Hal and Ollie had every really ended their little thing, and right now that was the last spark needed in this volatile situation.

* * *

It was something simple, just Ollie going out to patrol, that finally pushed Roy to a point where he had to lash out.

"Aren't you going to try and go with him?"

Dinah flinched violently at the thought. When Roy came over, taking her by the shoulders, she would not meet his eyes, and she seemed to try and shrink away from him.

"You don't get to give up the fight, Dinah," he told her firmly. "You wouldn't let me!"

"You weren't there! You didn't have to be helpless and useless!" she snapped back at him.

"You going to let him keep you helpless then? Let him keep making you shy away from the men who love you? Let him victimize countless other people because you're not out there kicking ass and taking names?"

She paled at each charge he laid on her, until she just sagged in his arms, not fighting him when he pulled her close to his chest and just held her. 

"Dinah, you never let me quit, and I wanted to. So bad. Get it through your head, you're stuck with me until you're better, and better means going back out there."

She sniffled, once, twice, and then he felt his shirt being soaked through. That was good too, though, because the whole time home had been nothing but utter passivity and acceptance of her fate. It was so unlike his passionate Dinah that the tears were a welcome change.

* * *

Dinah came in just as Roy was hanging up the phone, while Ollie was out running a delivery for her. She managed to hug him, and felt how tense he was.

"Roy?"

"Di...I've got some business, something I messed up. I have to go take care of it, but I'm not sure how, or if I can get it done alone," he told her in a soft, almost scared voice.

The woman, who had been in therapy now, making some progress on her fears, looked more like his Dinah than he had seen in weeks. For him, she could be roused to full interest in things outside her shop and home. "Oh?"

"That first big case I took? The one I told you I almost got nailed to the wall for?" He swallowed hard. "She had a baby. I saw the baby, last time I saw her...but I just got confirmation the little girl is mine." He had thought she was, seeing the red curls on the infant. Jade, however, was still stung from his betrayal of her and had lied.

Now, however, he knew for certain. He could not leave his own flesh and blood to grow up with an assassin for hire.

Dinah watched the conflict on his face, saw the tension all through him, and then unhesitatingly stepped up against his body, hugging him with depth and true strength.

"I'll go." She said it firmly, as if convincing herself as she said it.

Roy looked at her. Yes, she had been taking therapy. Yes, she had begun training again, though in private, at a women's only gymnasium. But this was his daughter's freedom on the line...

"I promised never to let you down, Boy-o," she reminded him.

Roy saw Black Canary, his Dinah then.

"Let's get moving then...my lead only had a certain time frame for me to be in place."

* * *

If Roy had considered Dinah the strongest woman he knew before, the change in her after Lian was brought home was marked as increasing the ferocity of a lioness. Having acquitted herself well in combat against both women and men, Dinah was well on her way to freedom from her demons. For Roy, and now for Lian, there was no step she would not take. Roy listened when Dinah insisted he stay there, in Seattle, at least long enough to let the baby grow some, to reach an age where daycare was feasible. A few strings pulled and favors called in got him a place on the call list for several government agencies in the Washington State area, and he was just as good at delivering flowers as Ollie was.

Things were settling, even between he and Ollie, when Donna showed up to ask for help, saying that Dr. Light was on the loose again. Roy was going for his gear, when he saw the ashen look on Dinah's face, while she clutched the baby close, and heard the muttered oath from Ollie.


End file.
